


summer is spreading (down inside my bones)

by mccallme (gamorage)



Series: my heart is gold (and my hands are cold) [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Gen, basically the events of season 1-3 but in malia's pov, canon compliant up to the end of 3b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 01:59:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5316014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamorage/pseuds/mccallme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she is nine years old, Malia Tate loses everything she has ever known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	summer is spreading (down inside my bones)

**Author's Note:**

> #repost 
> 
> title from maeve kelly's _my bones_.

When you are nine years old, you lose everything you have ever known.

You remember the night clearly: in the car with your mother and sister, you are going home to your father, with his warm embraces and kind smiles and whispers of _I love you_ every day. Radio Disney is blasting on the speakers, and you’re all singing along, even your mother who doesn’t know any of the words to any of the songs, and you’re all so, incredibly happy it seeps out of your pores, gets inhaled in between the lines of the chorus. It’s beautiful, and you can almost smell it.

Everything is _right_.

The car turns into the woods and the radio shorts out. The air around you is buzzing with laughter, and for a moment there is no sound except for your mingled breaths.

It is night, you realize absently. The full moon has risen.

And then—

And then.

Everything is _wrong_.

Without warning, searing pain burns through your entire body. Sweat begins to drip, drip, drip from your pores, the happiness melting into dread as white-hot pain scorches everything in its path. Your eyes are the first to ignite, and you’re screaming because you can’t _see_ , why can’t you _see,_ and you can distantly hear your terrified baby sister clutching at her plush doll asking why your eyes have turned golden.

You feel like there is _something_ in each of your _fingers_ that is _forcing its way out_. Your canines are _extending_ , _sharpening_ somehow, and it sets your gums ablaze with pain. You want to tell your mother that it _hurts_ , that you’re _terrified_ , but all that comes out of your lips are screams.

There isn’t much you remember after that. It blinks in and out, flashes of fire, of your mother screaming your name, your baby sister crying. And then nothing.

                        You wake up deep, deep in the woods, and you’re no longer human.

                        You wake up deep, deep in the woods, and you’re no longer Malia.

                        (You wake up deep, deep in the woods, and your family is gone.)

 

*

 

In the eight years that pass, you grow accustomed to the woods.

In the beginning, a small pack of wolves finds you and take you in for a while. From them, you learn how to hunt and hide and sneak around and use your senses to survive. They are a nomadic pack, however, and when they decide to migrate, you stay behind.

(The morning the pack leaves, you see a beautiful blonde woman set fire to a house filled with people—innocent people—and you sit helplessly by a car as you watch the house burn to the ground, bringing the family inside down with it. Later, you lurk among the trees when the police come, the last two members of that family, a girl and a boy, in the cruiser with the Sheriff. They must have been pulled out of school; indubitably, to see the ashes their family has been reduced to. You can smell the despair on the both of them, sour like curdled milk.

That night, you go to the car wreck the police never found and sleep next to your baby sister’s grave, the plush doll at your side.)

You stay around your ~~family’s~~ father’s house most of the time. Catching glimpses of him through the window is what keeps you from letting go of the little humanity you have left. You grow older and so does he, the bags under his eyes growing heavier as the days go by, the pungent smell of whiskey growing stronger.

He never goes into your room, not even when he’s made himself stupid with whiskey. He never goes into any of the rooms except his own.

When he goes out, sometimes, you go in. It’s only for a few minutes, but you feel safe and warm again, as if The Accident had never happened. You stroke your sister’s bed sheets with your cheeks, trying to keep that warm, cinnamon-sweet smell in your mind. It isn’t long until it stops smelling like your sister and starts smelling like you.

You go to your father every day, waiting until you can see him through the window, just to see if he’s okay. But. He never changes.

                        (You’re afraid that you won’t either.)

 

*

 

You are supposed to be sixteen when you see the girl whose family burned in the fire again. The girl, Laura, has grown older now, more severe. She smells more confident than she did before.

Then her uncle attacks her. Her eyes glow red and his eyes glow gold as they fight. She is faster and stronger than he, but he is more cunning. He manages to overpower her, and he tears her apart with sharp canines and sharper claws. Eventually, the life fades out of her eyes and her red begins bleeding into his gold.

 

*

 

A few hours later, two boys stumble into the woods. One of them is tall and tan, with shaggy brown hair, and he smells comforting, like sunshine and warmth and home. He lags behind his friend, who is tall and lanky and awkward and smells of nutmeg and allspice and the inside of a drugstore, wheezing like his lungs aren’t working right. The two intrigue you; nobody comes to the woods this late at night. You follow them.

Drugstore Boy, Stiles, leads the way, flashing his light in search of the missing half of Laura’s body. Sunshine Boy, Scott, follows almost reluctantly.

(The Sheriff, who also happens to be Stiles’ father, ends up finding him and pulling him away from Scott, leaving him in the woods. And then he is bitten by the same crimson-eyed wolf that killed his own niece.)

 

*

 

Another year goes by and things change.

Sunshine Boy becomes a wolf as well, and falls in love with a girl whose father wants to kill him.

The wolf with red eyes, the alpha, actually kills people.

The boy from the fire, Derek, whose eyes are a cold, steely blue, comes back to town, searching for his sister’s killer.

Scott and Stiles almost get killed. Several times.

The blonde woman who set fire to Hale Manor turns out to be Sunshine Boy’s girlfriend’s aunt, and manages to kidnap Derek until Scott has to save him.

The alpha kills the blonde woman violently, slashing his claws against her throat. Derek and Scott and Stiles set fire to him. In the end, his nephew is the one who kills him, and his eyes change from blue to red.

Just like before.

 

*

 

A boy walks out of the river later that night, soaking wet, shirt torn. There is a bite mark on his hip. He smells of winter and excitement and loneliness.

When he sees you he bares his teeth.

*

 

You find the orange-haired girl standing naked in the dirt behind the Hale house. There are unhealed bite marks on her side and leaves in her hair, and she smells of hospitals and blood and terror. She is looking at you blankly, as if she is seeing you but not registering it. You move closer to her slowly, but when you reach her side, she reaches for you, crouches down, runs her hand through your fur. When you begin to leave, she follows.

You lead her to the edge of the woods, where an ambulance’s red and blue lights are flashing; you smell the Sheriff’s apple pie and coffee odor, and you know she will be in good hands.

You leave when the Sheriff covers her up with his jacket and walks her to the police car.

 

*

 

A pregnant couple settles their trailer down at the edge of the woods.

They are murdered seven days later by a giant lizard.

*

 

The boy and the girl in Derek’s new pack run away, holding tightly onto each other’s hands, only to be taken again.

 

*

 

The air around the big tree stump in the center of the woods grows cold suddenly in the middle of the summer. It scares you. You don’t go near it if you don’t have to.

And then a young woman starts visiting. She plants both hands at the center of the stump and closes her eyes, inhaling. As if she were growing stronger just by touching it. And then she goes inside the fallout shelter for hours on end.

When dead bodies start appearing, all with blows to the head and slit throats, tied to trees by a string around their necks, the smell of death begins to emanate from both the woman and the stump.

(One night, the stump stops smelling of death and starts smelling like something irresistible. Like there is something pulling you towards it at all times. You hate it.)

 

*

 

The next time you see Scott, his eyes are red.

 

*

 

They’re calling Scott the True Alpha. You wonder what that means.

 

*

 

Your ears are ringing still, but the roar has died in Scott’s throat. His eyes are piercing and just as crimson and the eyes of the alphas before him, but he doesn’t look predatory. He looks shell-shocked.

You roll over on the dry leaves, and your entire body _aches_. Your eyes open and you look down at yourself. No fur. No paws. No tail.

You are human. With hands and feet and opposable thumbs and your eyes are darting all over, from the trees to the creek to your hands to the boy himself.

He says your name and you blink. 

 

*

 

They take you to your father.

The sheriff gives you his coat to cover up, and he has his hand on your back comfortingly as he knocks on the door with his other.

When your father opens up the door, he looks angry, as if you’d interrupted something important he’d been doing. When he sees you, he gives the sheriff a puzzled look, and it occurs to you that he might not even recognize you. You blink back tears.

He looks back at you and it hits him. He says you name, voice cracking, and you nod and then he’s got his arms around you and he’s whispering your name over and over and over again like it’s a prayer and you start crying for the first time in eight years.

 

*

 

You wake up in the middle of the night, expecting to be lying in a bed of leaves with your sister’s doll at her side. Instead, you open your eyes to the ceiling of your old bedroom. Someone is snoring beside you and you realize it’s your dad, sitting in the rocking chair by your bed. Like he’s afraid you’ll disappear again.

“I won’t,” you whisper. “I promise I won’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> shower me with ur unconditional love on [**_tumblr_**](http://ramenoff.co.vu/).


End file.
